Huawei “Open” to Supplying 5G Chips to Apple (Updated)

Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei said this week that his firm is “open” to selling its 5G chips to Apple, which has been badly burned by its reliance on slow-moving Intel.

UPDATE: Huawei may be open to working with Apple, but the firm has since admitted that it has not yet discussed doing so with consumer electronics giant. —Paul

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

The revelation came as part of an interview with CNBC.

“When I look back at how Huawei developed in the telecom market, we actually made some missteps,” Mr. Ren admitted during the interview. “We set prices based on our costs, which were relatively low … [and] made it hard for Western companies to compete with us. We have reflected on this a lot. We have raised our prices, and now many people think Huawei is expensive. With higher prices, we have started earning more. But we will not distribute this extra money to our employees or shareholders. Instead, we will use it to fund universities and scientists for their research and explorations into the future. This way, we will be able to make world-leading products.”

When asked whether he would consider selling Huawei’s intellectual property to companies like Apple for the first time, Ren said yes.

“We are open to Apple in this regard,” he said.

“I think Mr. Jobs was a great man,” Mr. Ren said, referring to Apple’s co-founder and former CEO. “Apple is also a great company. It’s always pushed to make the market bigger, not smaller. With an umbrella, Apple sells at high prices and maintains high quality. It has grown the market, enabling many other companies to survive.”

Ren seems a bit obsessed with Mr. Jobs, frankly.

“Mr. Jobs was great not because he created Apple, but because he created an era, the mobile internet era. Saying that he was great is an understatement. I think he was super-great.”

Regardless, the overture from Huawei is nicely-timed, given Apple’s issues getting high-quality modems for its iPhones. Apple likes to play two suppliers against each other, but when it was using modems from both Qualcomm and Intel, it had to slow down the former’s so that every iPhone worked similarly. But thanks to Apple’s legal spat with Qualcomm, that company is no longer a supplier. And Intel’s 5G chipsets have slipped from late 2019 to late 2020.

Of course, a Huawei partnership would be problematic for Apple, too, given the U.S. government’s current stance on the firm and on China. So it’s possible that Apple would only be able to sell Huawei-powered iPhones outside of the U.S.

Then there’s the little issue of Huawei’s market dominance. Huawei overtook Apple as the world’s second-largest maker of smartphones last year and it is expected to become the world’s biggest smartphone maker in 2019 or 2020. It’s unclear whether Apple would want to partner with such a firm, though Apple does partner at times with Samsung, another technology giant with which it has had various legal issues.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 4 comments

  • glenn8878

    15 April, 2019 - 4:10 pm

    <p>Do you mean slow down the later because Intel is the later and not the former? Qualcomm's chips are already cheap. I doubt <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Huawei&nbsp;will be cheaper than Qualcomm and only matching existing pricing. There's still the issue of Huawei&nbsp;being banned. Apple can only sell their iPhones with Huawei&nbsp;in other countries than US.</span></p>

  • pecosbob04

    15 April, 2019 - 6:29 pm

    <p>Are we talking selling chips or IP? The CNBC quote in the article seems to be pointing to the IP.</p><p><br></p><p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">When asked whether he would consider selling Huawei’s intellectual property to companies like Apple for the first time, Ren said yes."</span></p>

  • beckerrt

    Premium Member
    16 April, 2019 - 7:11 am

    <p>Sure, like that's going to be allowed to happen. </p>

  • colin79666

    Premium Member
    16 April, 2019 - 11:37 am

    <p>If Apple are serious on the security and privacy thing then I can’t see them going near Huawei. </p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC